Return to the Waters - Reclaiming the Body as Sacred

A love letter to the springs that have held me through healing and remembrance.

The first time I was guided to Harbin Hot Springs was by a dear Sister after a medicine ceremony. She knew I carried hesitation about being seen in my natural form, so we arrived at dawn—when the mist still touched the pools and few others were around.

In truth, I realized very quickly that I’d never had an issue with being in my birthday suit—I actually enjoyed the freedom of it. The unease I carried wasn’t my own; it had been conditioned into me. I’d been told since I was a girl to cover up, to hide my body for the sake of propriety, as though my innocence or beauty were something dangerous. But the real distortion was never in the body—it was in the way the world had been taught to look at it.

For generations, women have been asked to protect themselves from the gaze, rather than to question why the gaze itself lacks reverence. And so we learned to shrink, to cloak, to apologize for the very forms that carry life.

Standing there in the dawn light, I felt that inherited shame begin to lift like mist. The water didn’t ask me to hide; it asked me to return—to the naturalness of being, to the truth that nothing about this form was wrong or unsafe.

The discomfort I had long associated with being nude wasn’t about modesty—it was about safety. For years, I had felt the subtle pull of the male gaze—that energetic reaching that made my body feel like public terrain. But in those healing waters, something shifted. My body was no longer an object to be managed or hidden—it was a temple of breath and pulse, a vessel of soul. That morning marked the beginning of my reclamation—of learning to inhabit my skin again with reverence, not fear.

It took time—and many returns—to feel completely at peace in that space. The male gaze still exists in the world, but what changed most was my energy. Over the years, as I learned to anchor more deeply in my own light, something in my field shifted. That subtle pull I used to feel began to dissolve—not because others changed, but because I did.

I began to embody the quiet knowing:

I am sacred. You may see me, but you cannot take from me.

It was a reclamation of radiance—a remembering that true beauty doesn’t ask for validation; it emanates from within. When I held my energy with reverence, I noticed that the external gaze lost its power.

In the silent pools, this became a living meditation:
to keep my awareness turned inward,
to let my energy spiral back into my center,
to sit in the stillness of my own presence without needing to be seen.

I witnessed other women doing the same—Sisters on their own silent pilgrimages of return. Sometimes, even when I recognized familiar faces, I chose to stay in my own bubble. That too was an initiation—learning to honor energetic boundaries through sacred neutrality.

And in between these deep moments, there was laughter and lightness too:
picnicking near the pools with friends, sharing stories, soaking in the sun’s warmth between plunges. The balance of stillness and play, solitude and sisterhood, became part of the medicine.

What I find most beautiful about being at Harbin is the reminder that we all have bodies—each one a living story of shape, age, ancestry, and experience. In those pools, differences dissolve. There’s no striving, no comparing, no perfection to perform. Just breath, presence, and the quiet knowing that being human is enough.

It’s such a contrast to the Western conditioning we swim in every day—
a culture that teaches us to edit, perfect, and hide, to measure worth by appearance rather than essence. Here, in the warm mineral water, that illusion melts away. We remember that beauty is not a standard but a state of being.

I often think about how other cultures hold communal bathing as something sacred—a return to innocence, to equality, to naturalness. I’ll speak more about that during my upcoming women’s retreat, but what I can share now is this: there is profound healing in simply being seen as you are—without judgment, without pretense, surrounded by others who are remembering the same truth.

Over time, Harbin became a sanctuary between worlds for me—a place to soften after deep plant medicine journeys, ancestral healing and initiations. The waters have witnessed me weep, pray, and be reborn countless times. They have helped me integrate grief that once felt unspeakable—ancestral stories woven with shame, silence, and the forgetting of how sacred the body truly is.

The alternating currents of hot and cold have taught me the rhythm of release—how the body, like the Earth, knows how to let go if we simply give it warmth, space, and trust. Each plunge has carried me deeper into the truth that healing is not a destination—it’s a devotion to remembering.

These lands hold memory far beyond our lifetimes. Long before the springs were known by their current name, they were ceremonial grounds for the Indigenous peoples who gathered here for healing and prayer. When I immerse myself in the pools, I feel their echoes—the songs still held in the stones, the reciprocity still alive in the soil.

I have shed lifetimes here and also rediscovered joy—laughing with Sisters, sharing stories, singing and playing my flute in the garden. Harbin has become a mirror for my own evolution: from deep release to radiant expression, from isolation to communion.

A few years ago, I began offering sound healings here—an offering of gratitude for all this place has given me. Each time I return, it feels like coming home to my body, to my voice, and to the rhythm of life itself.
I journal in the garden, linger in silence at the pools, and allow inspiration to find me naturally—without devices, without noise. The springs remind me that sacred connection doesn’t need to be forced; it simply flows when we are present.

In a few weeks, I’ll return once again—this time, to guide other women in Return to the Waters, a retreat for reclaiming the sacredness of the body through water, sound, and remembrance.

If your soul feels the call, you’re welcome to join us in this temple of the living Earth. Come rest, release, and remember that you, too, are made of water—ever-shifting, ever-wise, ever-holy.

Closing Blessing:

May these waters remind us that we belong to the flow of life itself.
May every cell remember its song.
May we honor the body not as burden, but as a temple.

With love and reverence🌹